Back in the fray

Unfortunately my vacation days are over and I am back at work. After 4 weeks at home (the longest vacation/time off I ever had) it takes a while to get used to being at the office again, but I am getting there.

In the meantime in The Cave, the kitchen renovation is almost done and it looks MUCH better now. Still, my wish to make pictures and post them has been denied because it does not look “perfect”, there are some thing left to be painted. So maybe this coming weekend.

The bathroom upstairs is almost ready too and in the last weekend we cleaned and renovated the small room downstairs where we have the washer and the dryer. Before it was yucky and ugly, now it’s clean and with gypsum on the walls instead of wallpaper. It also has a new floor and the room is properly sealed. The previous owners were pigs, no other way to say it.

I started doing more stuff with my new Canon. First of all I was a bit surprised to find out it does not come with any kind of memory card so I got a 16GB SD Card from Amazon and now everything is fine. Most of the time I shoot in RAW format and I do the post-processing in Lightroom or RawTherapee if I am in Linux, so the extra space on the SD card is welcomed because one RAW file can take up to 20MB.

I still have a lot to learn but I have reactivated my Flickr and Deviantart accounts and I started posting there my first attempts. I have also updated the blog with a small widget which displays the latest flickr Deviantart uploads (the flickr widget looked crappy).

• Me @ Flickr (RSS feed for updates)
• Me @ Deviantart (RSS feed for updates)

I wish I would have some faster lenses, even something cheap like the Canon EF 50mm/ 1,8/ Objektiv II for a start, but that’s really not a priority right now so it’ll have to wait I guess. 

Holidays

First of all, song of the year as chosen in the “A State of Trance” weekly show by Armin van Buuren. I can imagine trance is not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s a nice catchy tune: “Gaia – Tuvan” (click the Play icon to listen).

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As most people this time of the year, I am in vacation but not much relaxation so far. First week we had a little special somebody visiting and among other things we visited “Sensapolis” and I got the do a bit of ice skating.

“Sensapolis” is an interior entertainment park in a huge building somewhere near Stuttgart. It’s a lot of fun for kids of all ages and it features things like a giant spaceship, climbing wall, science center, a Fairytale castle, a pirate ship, tree house and many more. The picture gallery shows you a bit of the place.

During this time we are also working (again) at the house, doing remodeling and other things in the kitchen and bathroom. Freya’s brother is visiting and since he knows a lot more than us at this kind of job (he does this for a living) we kinda “abuse” the poor guy. The kitchen is one of the things we inherited from the creatures who lived here before and it was in dire need of renovation. When it’s done, the ugly brown will be gone and it will look “really pretty”, as Freya puts it. And I completely agree, will post some “before/after” pictures once it’s done.

And of course I am still studying for my Cisco CCIP certification. I am supposed to take one of the exams on the 31st of December, I just hope I will be done by then.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year!

Back from vacation

I am not dead, I was just gone in vacation and we came back this weekend. Unfortunately. As always, it was way too short and I wish we could’ve stayed at least another week.

As I was saying before, we spent a week on Römö, an island on the Denmark’s west coast. We were lucky this time, the holiday home we rented was much better than the last 2, and cheaper I might add. And on top of that we had beautiful weather, only sunny days and a temperature of 19C throughout the week. The house was kinda isolated which is exactly how we want it. Some pictures of it:

Besides the mattress which was slightly old and the shower area in the bathroom, which was slightly small, I would say that overall it was quite nice and it had pretty much everything we needed. And it had lots and lots of lights inside, the owner must’ve had some sort of light fetish. But I can’t really complain about that.

We didn’t do much during the week, which was the whole point of the vacation. We went there to get away from people and just relax. For couple of days we also rented 2 bikes from a local rental place. To my surprise and mild   annoyance, it was quite difficult to fit them both in the Passat, even with both backseats down. The space inside looked huge but .. it wasn’t. In any case, it was really nice. I haven’t rode on a bike in a very long time but like they say, this is not something you forget. I felt like a kid again. And after 3 days even my butt stopped hurting from the really hard seat. The rest of the time we just walked around, went through the woods, “climbed” on the highest hill on the island (which is like 19m or so) or just soaked up the sun on the porch:

Almost every single night it was totally cloudless and since there is close to no light pollution here, the sky looks absolutely beautiful. There are so many stars and you can even see the wisps of the Milky Way. This time I came prepared with this:

When you look at the stars through those binoculars you really can’t believe how many they are. You can even make out the moons of Jupiter, which was above the horizon the whole week. I really wish I had a telescope with me.

One thing which didn’t really amuse us was how expensive things are in Denmark. We did have to go shopping for food and stuff couple of times and things are simply ridiculous. Everything was 30, 40% all the way up to 100% more expensive than in Germany: food, drinks, household items, etc. And this is at a supermarket, not at some place for tourists. Because if you talk about things for tourists, then it gets obscenely expensive. 18 euros for 2 smallish coffees and 2 sandwiches ? You even pay if you want them to slice your bread at a bakery! Things are expensive to begin with because VAT in Denmark is 25% but that still does not explain the prices. I wonder how much money the average person makes. I think next time we just take the 1h drive to the border and buy what we need from a german supermarket.

We also went to the huge beach on the west side of the island and witnessed a really pretty sunset:

But yeah, all good things come to an end so on saturday morning we left for home. It was a somewhat long drive the we just took our time and we arrived at The Cave around 9pm. At least our bed is much better And we have internet!

Still alive

As I was saying earlier, last week I had vacation. We didn’t go anywhere, we stayed at home because my parents came visiting. We had a somewhat busy schedule, as can be seen from the pictures below:

The little one was the guest of honor, if I can say that, so we went to all kind of appropriate places. It was quite nice at Tripsdrill, an entertainment park near Stuttgart, the oldest in Germany. This year they celebrated 80 years since opening. It’s quite big, we spent a whole day there and we didn’t get to see everything.

We also spent two days in the Fairytale Garden, another theme park for kids which inside the huge gardens from the Ludwigsburg Palace. There we saw over 40 scenes from well known children stories such as “Hansel and Gretel“, “Little Red Riding Hood” and so on. It was very nice, we had good weather and Diana had a great time.

The holiday was a chance for my parents to finally see what The Cave (that’s our house) looks like, I hope they were not too scared. We would’ve liked to finish with the renovation before we have visitors but it’s too much work. That does not mean the house is a construction site but some things are just not done. Oh well, what can you do.

Tuesday I went together with a guy from work and two of his irish friends to see Terminator: Salvation:

What can I say, nice special effects but I was not overly impressed. The first two movies were a lot better, I would say. Maybe also because the rating was just PG-13 as opposed to R for the first two movies (strong sci-fi action and violence, and for language and brief nudity). Of course, the reason was money I guess, PG-13 means a larger target audience. But it’s like one of the irish dudes said: if you just shutdown your brain and want to see pretty colored lights, then the movie is quite good

Today and maybe tomorrow I can relax a little bit but after that there is more work to be done. Stuff to do in the house and the whole next week I have some training class for my next Cisco exam. At least I get to do that remotely from home so it’s not that bad.

Life update

I am still around and I did not forget the blog, it’s just that I’ve been a bit busy with other things lately. During the week not much special is happening, it’s just work as usual. Most of the time in München, some of the time in this shithole small town called Rheinbach on the other side of Germany. Which is where I will be next week, actually. I can hardly wait, I am trembling in anticipation. Umm .. no, not really. In any case, not much I can do about that right now so I have to go.

Otherwise we’ve been working on our house, which we nicknamed “The Cave”, don’t ask why. The Cave is starting to look better now. We are also trying to do something about what we call “city rats”. They are not actually rats, just pigeons. We don’t like them, they are all over the roof, they make weird sounds and they shit everywhere. Luckily Freya might’ve found a solution:

Yes, that’s a pump-action water gun with a pretty good range. We hunt them down now and I think they are learning that it’s not so safe anymore to sit anywhere they please.

At the beginning of June I finally have a week of vacation, which should be kinda nice. As it happens, my parents will also be visiting and they will also bring a very special little somebody, which I will very happy to see again. That’s also the reason we have accelerated a bit the renovation inside The Cave. It’s not yet ready to receive too many guests but hopefully we’ll get it ready in time

Professionally I am still kinda working towards my CCSP, I have two more exams left in which the Cisco ASA firewall plays a major part. That’s one thing I can’t practice with at home so I don’t have many choices. Either classes or I just get whatever books I can for self study and I do the practice online. Which is what I will do actually. Internetwork Expert is a well-known site for the candidates to the CCIE, the Holy Grail of the Cisco certifications. They also have rack rentals and I noticed that the security rack has all the equipment I need to practice for my ASA exam: 2 ASA’s, IPS sensor, ACS server and so on, just perfect.

So I just rented rack slots for one week and at the end of June and I will just stay home and practice. It’s actually not that expensive either, about $15 for a 5.5 hour slot. My boss agreed with the plan, probably the $90 price for one week  plus some books as opposed to many thousands of euros for a 4-day Cisco course plus travel expenses might’ve had something to do with it.

Last but not least, I am still trying to convince Freya to do a guest post on the blog but so far no success. I am still working on it, she has some funny stories to tell from her daily trips to work I even offered to translate it into romanian but I guess I need to offer more incentive. We’ll see.

Train blogging

I have finally a breathing moment, I am currently in the ICE train which takes me to Utrecht, where I have my SNRS Cisco course. I will be in the train for another 6 hours or so. I don’t think I will be able to post this before I get to the hotel though.

What a week of nightmare! I have worked like a madman until the last moment when I had to leave to the train station. Since Wednesday I had rented a van, a Fiat Ducato, and ever since we’re packing and moving stuff continuously, from early in the morning until well after midnight. It’s unbelievable how many things can fit in a apartment. Not to mention the heavy stuff which really kill you: oven, dishwasher, wash machine, dryer, fridge, etc. I think every single muscle hurts, my back is killing me, fingers, palms .. even the bones.

My brain is not really functioning right now but I will list some of the past week’s highlights, in random order.

IKEA. At the IKEA in Stuttgart they opened a couple of unmanned checkouts. You scan the products yourself, pay with the card and then you’re on your way, quick and easy. Everything works on trust (and a little bit of surveillance, probably). But I really don’t think too many people will try to cheat. I asked myself when will they implement such a system in Romania but then I started laughing.

Trash. We produced incredible amounts of all kind of trash: rubble, old wallpapers, carpets, metal trash, electric devices, old wood, etc. Two van loads. The solution here for something like this is what they call a “deponie” (dumpsite). You go there with your car, van, truck etc and you pay based on weight. I paid 15 euros first time and 25 euros the second times, which I really don’t think it’s so bad. I was afraid I would be stuck with the mountain of trash. Then you just drive to one of the big containers and drop the stuff in there, based on the type of trash: stuff which burns, metals, ceramics, etc.

Fiat Ducato. It’s pretty cool to drive that van and look from above at all the other cars. For some reason it made me  think of my Unreal Tournament days when I would be sniping from a high spot and my toon would say some like “Die, bitch!!” whenever I would score a headshot and splash someones brains all over the ground. Good old days.

Cold. I know I said this before but here it is again: do not move in winter. Ever!

“Vacation”

Typical day of our “vacation”, today for example:

• alarm clock goes off at 7:30 am after coming home late the previous day and sleeping only 4 hours.
• get ready, put clothes on and leave. We had to be at the house early because the carpet we ordered for our apartment is supposed to be delivered  in the morning.
• work, work, work (clean kitchen, remove old and yucky things from all over the house).
• actually start to wake up couple of hours later.
• more work, remove old carpet from our bedroom and the living room.
• yet more work, take piles of trash downstairs.
• guy from VW dealership calls, my car is ready (yay!). I go there, drop the replacement car, get my own.
• more work, clean the garage, rearrange the insane amount of trash bags so I can actually move in that room in the basement.
• walk to the VW dealership, pick up my private car which I had left there, drive it back home, get back to the house with bus and train, fall asleep in the train coming really close to missing my stop, waste 2 hours in the process.
• the carpet is finally delivered. Of course, not in the morning as expected. If we had known, we would’ve slept a bit longer. Great.
• more work, help paint the yucky red tiles we had in the kitchen.
• go quick and get some small pizzas at the nearby Hoagies.
• yep, more work. Paint the ceiling in the kitchen.
• drive back home, stop the the Kaufland to get a few things to eat.
• write post, take shower.
• drop dead.

So much for the bathrooms …

Well, so much for the two bathrooms, I don’t think it’s gonna happen, not with the company we talk to so far. We had an interesting meeting with them last friday.

As I was mentioning before, we had a very unpleasant experience with a guy from that company. As a result we sent them an official complaint letter, relatively tough but polite, in which we were expressing our total disapproval about the way their employee handled the whole stuff. So, the guy comes back from vacation on the 7th of january and tries to contact us. I was in a meeting but he manages to talk to Freya. He just wanted some information, didn’t say anything about our letter. I just assumed he didn’t get it yet. I just sent him the information he needed via email then we exchanged couple more emails, things he needed for our quote. I still didn’t understand how he could send us a quote when he didn’t actually see how the pipes in the store looked like, as it was planned.

Anyway, we get the quote (quite a lot of money) and we set up an appointment at their office to discuss it. We didn’t really know what to believe, we just thought we’d give them another chance after their previous failure. We get there and we talk about the quote for a while. We realize that there are things he does not know (particulary how the piping for the toilet from the 1st floor gets there), things he would know if he would’ve came when he promised. Finally, the guy pulls out of his folder our complaint letter and also a german translation of the my blog post that I mentioned above!

As a small sidenote, when I got home and checked the logs I saw that he googled my email domain, found my blog and then he read every single post, tag, category, etc from my blog. Everything through Google Translate because he most likely didn’t understand english or romanian. I wish I had more such thorough readers, I would have some cool statistics. I even felt flattered for a nanosecond or two but then I quickly got over it because I got some Gestapo-like flashbacks with people in a badly-lit room, looking at screens and analyzing each post, phrase, sentence, word and pixel from my blog, trying to find Achile’s heel.

Coming back to our discussion, the guy actually googled me. Most likely Freya too but she’s like 10.000 times less present than me on the net. He expressed his disapproval about my obvious lack of glory in describing his performance. On my personal blog … I tried to explain that he actually made us lose a lot of time and that now it’s unlikely we’ll ever finish the bathrooms before we have to move. I also tried to find out why he didn’t keep his promise with the visit and why he didn’t at least contact us to let us know, but in vain. He said that he was extremely busy (don’t see how that is my problem), that he had to cover for another colleague who was in vacation (again, I don’t think that is my problem) and in the end he said something like: “Why didn’t you contact me?”. WTF ?! If he made a promise he should keep it. And if he can’t then he should just pick up the phone and call, it takes what, 2 minutes ? But no, he preferred to leave his customer in the dark and leave in vacation. There were some other things too, like he actually came on friday but the lady in the store was not there. Even though he should’ve come when he promised, tuesday that is, during the day he spoke with Freya on the phone. And so on.

Anyway, seeing that we were not getting anywhere, we asked him to give us two minutes to decide how we should proceed. That was no problem, he got up and went to another office where he kept talking with someone else. The guy has a very strong schwäbisch accent so I didn’t really get all of it but Freya did. They were talking about us or about our bathrooms. Before we finished talking, another guy comes to us and starts explaining (speaking very very fast) how they are extremely busy, how they have a lot of orders which came in november (!!) and that there is no way they could start working before march. We were just looking at him unbelieving. We didn’t even bother to tell him that the guy we initially talked to said that we would get the quote before Christmas and that if all was well, they could start working in early January. If they had orders from the previous month that guy would’ve known. Obviously something stinks here.

Then, when he heard we still need to speak with the bank about financing, he looked at the final price and started to talk with what appeared to be great enthusiasm about us having to add quite a lot to that amount because the house is of old construction and things can “come up”. Right. It was kinda clear to us that they don’t really want to do this job and that they just want to get rid of us. We had explained to them from the very beginning that we are tight with the time and there is no way we can wait until march. Good riddance, we just said our goodbyes and we left.

See, it does not really matter how big the company is or how good your shop looks like; in the end the way the customer is treated matters. Pitty, the guy we talked to initially (the boss, we assumed) seemed like a really nice guy, sincere and wanting to help. But otherwise … let’s just say we were less than impressed.

The bad thing is, now we have to do something with the existent bathrooms before we move. After we make them usable, we’ll have a bit of breathing space and we can start looking for someone more serious. What a mess.